Pump.fun is a website where anyone can create and trade a Solana memecoin in a few clicks, with no upfront liquidity needed. Each new coin starts on a bonding curve, a fixed pricing formula that raises the price as people buy and lowers it as they sell. If enough people buy to complete the curve, the coin "graduates" to a normal trading pool on PumpSwap, pump.fun's own exchange.
Before It Rugs is not affiliated with pump.fun. This page describes how it works at the time of writing (October 2026). Details change, so check pump.fun's own documentation for current numbers.
UK note: pump.fun has blocked UK users since December 2024, after the FCA added it to its Warning List of firms that may be providing financial services without permission. Its coins still trade on other Solana apps, with no UK consumer protection.
Why pump.fun exists
Before launchpads, creating a tradable token meant setting up a liquidity pool yourself and putting your own money into it. That money was also a common target for rug pulls: the creator could simply take it back out.
Pump.fun removed that step. The creator does not need to fund a pool. The bonding curve acts as the market maker (the thing that always quotes a price to buy or sell) until the coin graduates. This made launching a token almost free, which is why the number of new memecoins exploded.
How the bonding curve works
Every standard pump.fun coin has a total supply of one billion tokens. Most of that supply, around 800 million tokens, is sold through the bonding curve. The rest is held back to seed the trading pool when the coin graduates.
The curve works like this:
- The first tokens are very cheap.
- Each purchase takes tokens off the curve, and the price for the next buyer goes up.
- Each sale puts tokens back on the curve, and the price goes down.
- The price at any moment depends only on how many tokens have been sold so far.
There is no order book and no human setting prices. The formula does it. This means early buyers pay far less than later buyers for the same coin, which is a big reason the first few seconds of a launch are dominated by bots and insiders.
Key point: On a bonding curve, early buyers can sell to later buyers at a profit even if nothing about the coin has changed. Arriving late puts you on the wrong side of that maths.
What graduation means
When every token allocated to the curve has been bought, the curve is complete and the coin graduates. For coins paired with SOL (Solana's main currency), which is most of them, the dollar market cap at graduation depends on the price of SOL (at the time of writing, about 85 SOL has been raised by then). Coins paired with USDC graduate at a fixed dollar level.
On graduation, pump.fun automatically creates a trading pool for the coin on PumpSwap. PumpSwap has been the graduation destination since March 2025. Many older guides still say coins move to Raydium, which is out of date.
After graduation, the coin trades like any other Solana token. It appears on DexScreener, and exchanges like Jupiter can route trades through its pool.
Graduation is rare. Historically, fewer than 2 in every 100 pump.fun coins have graduated. Pump.fun changed its graduation mechanics on 21 July 2026 with a feature called BOOST, which uses part of the migration liquidity to buy and burn tokens in the first minutes after graduation. Graduation rates jumped in the days after the change (a reported 6.7% on one day in late July), though The Block questioned whether BOOST caused the rise. The large majority of coins still never graduate.
Fees
At the time of writing, pump.fun's documentation lists:
| Where | Total trading fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Bonding curve | 1.25% per trade | Split between the coin's creator (0.30%) and the protocol |
| PumpSwap pool after graduation | Tiered by market cap | Starts at 1.25% for small coins and falls as market cap grows |
| Creating a coin | No platform fee | You still pay Solana network costs |
| pump.fun website and app | Extra 0.45% platform fee (0.40% with a referral code) since 17 October 2026 | Not charged when you trade the same coin through other apps |
These fees are taken on every buy and every sell. On a coin you trade in and out of several times, they add up quickly. You will also pay Solana network fees and, often, priority fees (an optional tip to get your transaction processed faster).
What pump.fun does and does not protect you from
The launchpad design removes one old type of rug pull, where a creator funds a pool and withdraws it. On graduation, the liquidity placed into the PumpSwap pool cannot simply be pulled by the creator in the usual way.
It does not protect you from the risks that matter most on a new coin:
- The creator and their friends can buy early and sell later. Nothing stops a creator buying a large share in the first block, or spreading purchases across many wallets. See bundled launches and insider wallets.
- Holders can dump. If a few wallets own a large share of supply, they can sell into the curve or the pool and crash the price.
- Copycats. Anyone can launch a coin with an identical name and picture. Always check the contract address (the coin's unique ID). See copycat tokens.
- Graduation is not a quality badge. A coin can be pushed to graduation by coordinated buying and then sold off straight after.
How to research a pump.fun coin
Look at who holds the supply, how fast the early buys happened and whether the same wallets keep appearing. That is a lot to check by hand on every coin, which is why we built Before It Rugs. Our live board grades new Solana memecoins A to F on these warning signs using public data. A good grade only means fewer visible red flags, so read can a safe-looking coin still rug? before relying on one.